


lost and embrangled

by serendipitousDescent



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Curses, M/M, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 19:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12282771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitousDescent/pseuds/serendipitousDescent
Summary: A witch is the only thing that can help Kakashi now.And Sakumo is more than willing to carry his infant son to wherever or whoever that witch may be.





	lost and embrangled

**Author's Note:**

> For [Sumigakure's](http://sumigakure.tumblr.com/) Halloween Event, with the prompt "Witches/Wizards!"

Don’t follow the path past the waterfall, the villagers tell Sakumo, no one ever comes back. The path itself is overgrown with moss, vines twisting in and around tree trunks, and tiny lights no bigger than the size of his thumb. Most of all, they continue, a witch lives at the end of the path. 

The villagers take him for unknowing, and Sakumo doesn’t blame them while he carries Kakashi on his hip, flushed and feverish. If their positions were reversed, he would likely think the same.

None of them seem to know anything about the witch, when he asks. There is no reason for him to believe that this witch is anything more than another earth mage, driven into seclusion like so many before them. All Sakura has is a gut feeling to go on. But gut feelings have never let him down in the past. They couldn’t have when he still has Kakashi in his arms, dependent on him even when thick grief makes it difficult to breathe. 

The path the villagers mentioned is in fact overgrown with moss, a thick green that strips away the protections afforded to him by a dear friend. 

Kakashi’s hands tug at his shirt, but Sakumo keeps moving forward.

Stopping was never an option before, he is not going to let it be an option now. 

Vines do not just twist around the thick trees that tower over their heads. Rather, they reach out towards him and Kakashi, grasping at clothes and hair alike, before letting go once more. The vines gravitate towards them like they’re alive, and Sakumo allows them to take the tie from his hair without protest. 

What the vines don’t do is follow them. There is no need to follow, not when there are enough vines to follow them from one end of the forest to another. There are enough vines to bury both him and Kakashi alive, suffocate them until their vision darkens and they enter a place they can’t come back from. It is, perhaps, telling that they don’t do that. 

Kakashi tightens his grip on Sakumo’s shirt, his entire, tiny body tensing, just as it always does before Kakashi releases a piercing wail. 

“Shh, we only got a bit further to go, pet,” Sakumo murmurs, carefully petting the back of Kakashi’s head. 

Ignoring the hard sections of Kakashi’s hair has become second nature to him by now. Continuing forward as Kakashi calms, despite the holes in his shirt, is what makes the lights appear. 

The light are just as small as the villagers told him, but they are not actually lights. Or they are not only lights, given the way they float between the trees and stop at each flower poking through the vines. Sakumo has seen the lingering aftermath of spiritual blessings before, however never in such frequency, never with such intelligence to them. Only someone with ridiculous power would create an aftermath like this, and that knowledge merely solidifies his gut feeling.

Sakumo follows the bend in the path, the forest getting thicker and thicker until the only thing lighting his way is the pieces of blessings floating through the air. Slowly, the path comes to an end and he is left in the middle of a small clearing. 

His heart sinks. 

There is nothing here to suggest a witch of any sort, just the vines and the blessings and a shuffling noise following them from the underbrush. The blessings suggest that someone once lived here, but witches are often the sort with far more years to their life than most. 

Kakashi ducks his head into the crook of Sakumo’s shoulder just as he is about to turn back around. It is while Sakumo is looking down at his infant son that he sees it. 

It being a snake, its size difficult to tell, but coloured such a beautiful violet that Sakumo nearly has to take a second look. Its eyes focus in on him and Kakashi, shining a breath-taking shade of gold. Yet, it makes no move to lunge towards them, shows no signs of anything but the wish to bask in the shadows of the underbrush, its head resting on its thick coils. 

Sakumo kneels down, nearly by instinct. “Hello there. You are certainly a gorgeous thing, aren’t you?” 

Its tongue flickers out, as if to agree. 

“I don’t suppose you know where the great Sannin Orochimaru is,” Sakumo muses, his smile nearly hopeless. “My son and I have come quite the way to find him.” 

A long moment passes, to the point where Sakumo nearly bids the snake goodbye and starts his search anew. Then the snake tilts its head to the side. Sakumo is careful not to freeze as it moves towards him and winds through his feet. For a wild snake, it certainly is friendly. 

In the end, Sakumo does stand up once more, but only because the snake continues on across the clearing. It reaches from one end of the clearing to the other like this, and does bother to look back at them. But Kakashi stops his quiet sniffling once Sakumo starts to follow it, and that is a better reason to continue than most. 

There is no clear cut path that the snake takes. Neither is there anything to suggest anyone has ever come this way, at least not until the vines start to shift out of the way. That is when small stepping stones are revealed to him. Each stone Sakumo steps on is a bit rounder, a bit smoother than the last, right up until he follows the snake to a stone that has a small designed carved into it with care. 

Sakumo sees the vines before he sees anything else. They drape over a figure at the end of the newly-forth path, the snake curling up at its feet. 

The figure is not quite as tall as Sakumo is, but with the vines piled up on it, it is hard to tell for certain. Bits of grey are visible through the vines, telling a story that Sakumo only knows a part of. 

Sakumo shifts Kakashi to one arm and reaches out to touch the vines. They slowly drop off of the figure, pushing themselves off to the side and revealing a stone man underneath. His features are not twisted into pain, like Sakumo might have expected of someone turned to stone. Rather, there is almost a touch of a smile to his lips that makes him almost feminine. That fact is compounded by his long, straight hair pulled back into a bun and flowing robes, but Sakumo certainly can and does trace the masculine line of his shoulders. 

There are few things in the world that can reduce an earth mage to a state like this. Fewer still that could potentially attack one of the Sannin without them noticing first. Kakashi would be just about the last thing on Orochimaru’s radar if he awoke. 

And yet, Sakumo still sits in front of him. 

His arms may cry with relief at being able to lower Kakashi down to his lap for the first time in hours, but the horror of seeing the black lines radiating out from his left eye overcomes that. They must be deeper than they were when they left the tavern this morning. Or at the very least, they must be infecting the skin around it and putting Kakashi in further pain. 

It does not startle him when the snake shifts from the bottom of the not-statue. Sakumo only has half a mind to keep an eye on it at all. But it keeps an eye on him regardless, moving around his back and putting its head in his lap. 

“This is my son, Hatake Kakashi.” Part of the introduction is habit, but the other is undoubtedly the way tears well up in Kakashi’s eyes, one last ditch effort to stop him from crying. “I apologize now if he cries. As you can probably tell, he’s been in a lot of pain lately, and it makes him a bit irritable.” 

Kakashi sniffles a bit, quieting only when he grabs hold of Sakumo’s finger. Stopping him from pulling the finger into his mouth is more difficult, but Sakumo has felt the sharp teeth already starting to poke through his gums. 

There are admittedly more pleasant experiences to go through with his son. 

Sakumo chuckles at Kakashi’s pout nonetheless. “Plus, as you can likely tell, gorgeous, he isn’t too happy with me right now. He had to have his face covered up when we were in the village, and it got a bit too warm, didn’t it?” 

All Sakumo gets in response is an unimpressed stare as Kakashi waves the hand holding Sakumo’s finger side to side. Anything else would be almost creepy, however. Teeth and an inch of hair do not equate proper words, he has learned this last month, not even when the hair in question is as white as his own.

“That’s right, Kakashi. You were so warm that you must have woken up everyone in the village last night. I bet that’s why they were so happy to see us go this morning,” Sakumo says, lightly. 

“And what’s your name?” asks a hoarse voice. 

His head shoots up. 

The stone man is no longer quite as stone as he had been a few minutes before. Nor is he standing, for that matter, one hand on his neck and his knees on the ground. 

A piercing gaze of gold takes Sakumo’s breath away. 

“Your name?” Orochimaru of the Sannin asks him. 

Sakumo swallows and struggles to compose himself. “Sakumo?” 

An amused glint to those golden eyes reveal that his introduction is far more a question than it should have been. But Sakumo is still battling with the concept of being rational when confronted with a man like Orochimaru, only made all the more beautiful when filled with the breath of life. 

As if entirely aware that the attention is no longer on him, Kakashi tugs Sakumo’s finger into his mouth and bites down on it. Sakumo winces, automatically looking down. Any harder than that and Kakashi would have broken through the skin, yet again. He dreads the state of his fingers the day Kakashi’s teeth fully grow in. It will not be a pretty sight. 

“I can likely seal away the corruption for now,” Orochimaru offers, his back straightening to the point of regality as he stays kneeling. “However, Tsunade would have to heal him herself, given the nature of the curse. Certain techniques become… volatile when I attempt them personally.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“Finding her should be easy enough, given her tendency to stick around Rice Country’s gambling rings. Unfortunately, I have someone to hunt down and char to a crisp, so I will be preoccupied.” 

That statement should do anything but endear Orochimaru to him further. “Can I join you?” 

“Rice Country is in the opposite direction of where I’m headed.” 

“Guess you haven’t heard that Rice Country was destroyed then. A few decades back, actually,” Sakumo blurts out. “But if you let us come with you, I’ll buy you dinner.” 

“Rice Country is - you wish to buy me dinner?” Orochimaru asks, carefully. 

“I think I’d like to buy you dinner every night for the next month, beautiful. One is a good place to start though.”


End file.
